Introduction September 6, 1996: Hurricane Fran and before -- Beaufort of the Admiralty -- In search of the wind -- The Beaufort scale, and who wrote it, in a general way -- Reverse engineering the wind -- "Nature rightly questioned, never lies": the Beaufort scale, nineteenth-century science, and the last eighteenth-century man -- Getting the word out: on the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, the dictionary, and how Sir Francis Beaufort slept with his sister -- Taking the measure of the wind: the fabulous beaufortometer -- A picture of the wind: poetry, the shipping forecast, and the search for the North Shields observer -- Observation, a panegyric: on the Beaufort moment.